Grapthar's Song of the Day: Paul McCartney 'Heart of the Country'

grapthar (74)in #music • 6 years ago

Paul McCartney - Heart of the Country

It's been a few good

weeks since I've shared any Beatles' (or solo members') songs, so I figured we are due for one. Paul McCartney's solo career began right when the band broke up, with the release of a self-titled debut album in 1970. He formed a new group with his wife Linda (Wings), but also continued releasing material under his own name throughout the next few decades. I really like this era of his songwriting, you can tell he wanted to do new things that he hadn't achieved in the Beatles, but also wanted to go back to his rock/blues roots and sometimes strip things down, avoiding the experimental production they were known for.

Listen to Heart of the Country by Paul McCartney here.

This song is from his 1971

album Ram, which has some of my all-time favorite tracks on it. This song uses a typical McCartney technique of playing in a key in the Chorus/Intro (in this case, Gminor), then using some modal interchange from the parallel major key (Gmajor). In the Verse here, he uses a G7 which makes it stand out from the Chorus and feel more bluesy, before the little lick that mirrors the melody line (with the scat vocals), which returns us to the Chorus and the more country-western guitar progression.